MAY 13, 2025 |
Photo – Quality Landscape logo – Bigfoot99 file photo
The Wyoming Supreme Court has ruled that the owner of a Saratoga landscaping company must forfeit his $66,000 bond to the Department of Environmental Quality.
For the past 16 years, Quality Landscape and Nursery owner Randy Stevens has fought both, the Town of Saratoga and the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality, over alleged mining activity on his property. Stevens was accused of continuing to remove soil from the southern edge of his land, located at the corner of Maple Avenue and South River Street in Saratoga, despite multiple demands from the Town and DEQ that he stop excavation work on the property.
The governing body of Saratoga alleged that by removing the soil at the south side of the property line, Stevens was undermining a town-owned alleyway located directly on the other side of the property line and above his mining operations. In July of 2023, the Department of Environmental Quality brought Stevens before the Wyoming Environmental Quality Council to ask that his $66,000 bond be forfeited and used to remediate the site.
After a four-month deliberation, the Environmental Quality Council sided with DEQ, a state agency, and ordered the business owner’s bond to be revoked.
This past January, Stevens appealed the decision in Carbon County District Court, arguing that the Environmental Quality Council failed to consider his previous attempts to rectify the situation and DEQ’s repeated failure to act on his previous violations. However, District Judge Dawnessa Snyder affirmed the Environmental Quality Council’s decision to revoke Stevens’ $66,000 bond.
Stevens once again appealed the decision, this time to the Wyoming Supreme Court. In a written ruling dated March 27th, Chief Justice Kate Fox, along with Justices Lynne Boomgaarden, Kari Jo Gray, John Fenn, and Robert Jarosh upheld the bond revocation.
In court documents obtained by Bigfoot99, Justice Jarosh writes that Stevens’s attorney, James Salisbury, from The Salisbury Firm in Cheyenne, argued that the district court made an error when it upheld the Environmental Quality Council’s 2023 decision.
Attorney Salisbury argued res judicata, a legal principal which prevents parties from relitigating issues that have already been decided in a previous case. Salisbury pointed to a 2019 bench trial which supposedly resolved all outstanding issues dating back to 2009.
Stevens’s attorney also evoked a writ of mandamus, which is a court-issued order that compels a government official, entity, or lower court to perform a duty that is legally required by a court but has not been fulfilled. Court documents show that Attorney Salisbury demanded the Town of Saratoga immediately install a slope stabilization structure in the alleyway on the south side of Stevens’s property. Additionally, the attorney demanded the Town install water, sewer, and electrical service to the site, allowing Stevens to utilize the property for purposes beyond mining.
Justice Jarosh wrote that constructing a retaining wall and providing water and sewer access are not legally required ministerial duties the Town is obligated to fulfill.
In the final conclusion, the Wyoming Supreme Court sided with the Carbon County District Court in affirming the original 2023 bond forfeiture.
The decision severely limits the landscaping company owner’s ability to further appeal the ruling. If Stevens believes his constitutional rights were violated or that there is a federal legal issue involved, he may file a formal request to have the U.S. Supreme Court review the case.
